Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The most expensive page of poetry

"Five-million dollars is the estimate put on a single illuminated page from the Shahnamah of Shah Tahmasp of Persia [which is up for auction]. The five-hundred-year-old “Book of Kings” is considered the finest illustrated manuscript in existence and the Southeby’s offering one of a handful left in private collections. The page is in pristine condition and depicts vividly the scene 'Faridun In the Guise Of A Dragon Tests His Sons.'"

If you're a Basil Bunting admirer like me, and don't have the five mill, stay tuned for my book, Basil Bunting's Persia, which will be published later this year by Flood Editions. Bunting, as many will know, spent many years translating and adapting parts of the Shahnamah as well as other Persian poems.

His interest in Persian poetry began when he found a French translation of Ferdowsi’s famous epic in a book stall on the harbor quays of Genoa in the early 1930s:

“I found a book—tattered, incomplete—with a newspaper cover on it marked Oriental Tales. I bought it, in French. It turned out to be part of the early 19th century prose translation of Ferdowsi, and it was absolutely fascinating. I got into the middle of the story of the education of Zal and the birth of Rustam—and the story came to an end! It was quite impossible to leave it there, I was desperate to know what happened next. I read it, as far as it went, to Pound and Dorothy Pound, and they were in the same condition. We were yearning to find out, but we could think of no way. The title page was even missing. There seemed nothing to do but learn Persian and read Firdausi, so, I undertook that. Pound bought me the three volumes of Vullers and somebody, I forget who, bought me Steingass’s dictionary, and I set to work. It didn’t take long. It’s an easy language if it’s only for reading that you want it.”

But Bunting wanted Persian for more than just the reading, and of his efforts he would write to Louis Zukofsky: "It is no boast to say that I am more widely read in Persian than most of the Orientalists in British and European universities.” Indeed, he’d applied for a Guggenheim in 1932 to translate the Shahnameh, which tells the history of the kings of Persia from mythical times down to about 628 A.D. in some sixty thousand couplets. Though he didn’t get the fellowship, his diligent fascination only grew—he even eventually named his children for legendary characters in the poem: Roudaba, Bourtai, and Rustam.

I tell the whole story in my intro to the book...

Needless to say, Persian poetry is of contemporary importance here in the West, for reasons I've blogged about previously.

Basil Bunting was surely among the most impoverished of modern poets, so the incredible price tag for this page of poetry leaves one rather heavyhearted. But maybe this news item will draw attention to the poem itself, as well as Bunting's work on it. All that money for one page; the epic itself, of course, has thousands.

Note: Bunting's versions are wonderful, but readers should also be aware of Dick Davis's recently published translation, about which more here.

1 comment:

Speaking as a Quaker myself, I see nothing in Bunting's views that would not be reflected in Quaker values. Maybe in his day he was a lot less Christocentric than Quakers of his generation, so it probably wasn't an easy fit.

And if he only ever mentioned it once in an interview with Mottram, in what way is that 'promoting'? Quakers are often very reluctant to be seen as evangelising for their faith; but that doesn't mean we can't sometimes give it a passing mention.

DON SHARE

"Don Share is a poet and polymath extraordinaire and a great gift to the literary scene at large." - Aram Saroyan

About Wishbone (from Black Sparrow): "The most soulful book I've read in a long, long time." - Alice Fulton

"Don Share's work is compressed as a haiku, intent as a tanka, witty as a sonnet, witless as a song, relentless as an expose, patter without pretension...his elegant poetry, exposed as a haiku, expansive as a renga, boisterous as a bridge, happy as Delmore Schwartz with Lou Reed and vice versa, vivacious as the living day, sustained like a whole note, clipped as a grace note, loving various and shrewd as a thingist, soapy as Ponge, delightful as light, dedefining as a new rite, built out of attention, music and sight." - David Shapiro

"Squandermania is a book of associative delight, even when the poems are at their most grave. They combine the obliquity of Mina Loy, the incantatory freshness of Roethke, and even Plath’s devotion to nursery rhyme to leaven the book’s prevailing tones of irony, sorrow, and regret. The poet’s awareness of how daily life refuses to cohere into a consoling pattern is beautifully mirrored by his conviction that language itself signals a fall from grace and unity and emotional wholeness. And yet the poet keeps faith with language by allowing language to drive the poems, even as the poet’s occasions and subject matter are grounded in what Hopkins called 'the in-earnestness of speech.'" - Tom Sleigh

About Union: "Few poets manage such dexterous and fresh music. Few books are as lovely or profound." - Alice Fulton

"Brimming with heart and intelligence... confirmation of Don Share’s stature in American letters. Evidenced by a return to his debut collection, he’s been at the summit from the beginning." - William Wright, Oxford American

"Don Share's earnest, moving first volume, Union, represents the promising next stage in so-called Southern narrative poetry. Share writes clear, well-crafted page-long poems about romance, memory and separation ("our house tocks and ticks/ like an inherited clock whose hour hand sticks"). He may, however, achieve greater recognition for longer work (like "Pax Americana") in which his own stories join those of Memphis, Tennessee and of the Civil War's difficult, lingering guilt: "Where the United States ends/ and begins// The Mississippi is/ a long American wound." - Publishers Weekly

"I delight in the precision of these chiseled poems and in the sizeable, important ambition of Share's imagination." - David Baker

"Union is a tour de force, establishing Share’s credentials as well as his poetic voice." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"... something special. I hadn't known his poetry at all; it is brilliant." - Eric Ormsby

"The poetry of Don Share expresses many tensions between Memphis past and Memphis present, much like the novels and short stories of Peter Taylor." - Wanda Rushing, Memphis and the Paradox of Place: Globalization in the American South

About Miguel Hernandez: "There is a sense of shared elation between reader and translator that confirms the delight of exact sensation when the poems feel transmitted by that cautious and subtle alchemy that is the translator's skill. I have felt this with Don Share's versions of Miguel Hernandez: but this is also because he is a fine poet in his own right, one who surrenders his sensibilities to the task of transference." - Derek Walcott

"Share manages to make Hernández-in-English dazzle, bringing readers closer to the poet's sense of language and meaning." - Huffington Post

About Bunting's Persia: Guardian Book of the Year, 2012 and Paris Review staff pick!

"Both the publishing house and the book’s editor Don Share have done an excellent job: a slim and attractive book, a chronological poet-by-poet running order, and a fine introduction by Share, full of details about Bunting’s curious life." - Bookslut

"I read it on Valentine’s Day." - Lorin Stein

"Virtuoso writing by any standard... deserves to be famous." - The Hudson Review

"Bunting's Persia is a delight..." - Alastair Johnston, Booktryst

About The Traumatophile: "Trenchant, smart-ass, broken-hearted, hantée, swoony, maudlin, mordant, sinister, gloomy, goofy, eyes open and counting every penny, these are. And inspiring. How many poems can you say that about, anymore?" - The Unreliable Narrator blog